December 23, 2025
If the universe seems cold from a distance, birthdays are part of its rebuttal.
Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy
Birthday · December 23, 2025
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APOD published December 23, 2025. Credit: Valter Binotto. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
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Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy
Original APOD · December 23, 2025 ↗What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES. Although both last only a small fraction of a second, sprites are brighter and easier to photograph than their more common electrical-discharge cousins. ELVES are rapidly expanding rings that are thought to be created when an electromagnetic pulse shoots upward from charged clouds and impacts the ionosphere, causing nitrogen molecules to glow. Capturing either form of lightning takes patience and experience -- capturing them both together, since they usually occur separately, is rare. The featured image is a frame from a video recorded from Possagno, Italy late last month above a distant thunderstorm over the Adriatic Sea.
Image credit: Valter Binotto